Check out the card first:
Four straight seasons of 300+ innings, including an incredible 376.2 in 1972 when he posted a 24-17 record with a 2.51 earned run average in 49 starts! INSANE!
He also threw eight shutouts and struck out 193 batters along with 20 complete games.
You have to remember that just two seasons before, in 1970, he led the league in appearances with 77, ALL out of the bullpen, while posting 21 saves.
The man could do it all!
In 1968, while leading the league once again with 88 appearances and 46 finished games, he threw for 159 innings and posted a sparkling 1.87 ERA along with a 13-12 record, and three years later in 1971 he’d go on to post a sub-2.00 ERA as a starter, throwing seven shutouts while posting a 22-13 record in his first year as a full-time starter, a year that also started his incredible innings run.
It’s just amazing to think that someone threw all those innings in one season during my lifetime in this day of pitch-counts and specialty relievers.
By the time he retired after the 1978 season, Wood finished with a 164-156 record, appearing in 651 games, with 297 of them starts.
He’d have a final ERA of 3.24, with 24 career shutouts, 1411 strikeouts and 57 saves over 2684 innings pitched.
He led his league in pitching appearances three times, all consecutive, then went on to lead the league in starts four years in a row soon after.
Awesome!
